Public Policy, Big Data and Smart Cities

I have just got back from the International Conference on Public Policy in Milan, where I was attending a stream of internet and public policy panels, as well as presenting a paper on explaining open data outcomes which I am currently working on together with some colleagues here at the OII. The conference itself was huge: in only it’s second year it attracted around 1,300 registrations, from across the policy sciences. Our sessions on the internet were quite well attended, though I didn’t feel like we attracted many people beyond those already interested in the internet.

I acted as discussant on a couple of panels on big data, with a particularly interesting one on smart cities. I think the smart city field is where public policy and big data overlap most closely: using big data to govern the city has already captured a lot of attention in both academia and policy itself, with examples of initiatives such as the Mayor’s Office for Data Analytics in New York or the Centro de Operações in Rio de Janeiro. It’s interesting to see the potential these places have for improving existing administration

It’s also worth highlighting all the challenges to smart city development, from opening data to getting the right skills in place. This is probably the reason why large cities which have created these kind of data “nerve centres” are leading the way, because they can overcome these obstacles in a concentrated way with direct support from the hierarchy. They raise the interesting possibility, furthermore, that they will become not just supporters of policy execution, but places where policy is set and defined. That would be revolutionary.